This general election, most of us feel like we’re being asked to choose between blue Tories and red Tories.
Whatever happens on election day, the next morning we’ll all still have to go to work while the politicians carry on with their lies and their wars.
Strategy
Some people have been asking if voting for the Green Party instead is a good idea.
Some of what the Greens say is quite good. They want free education, rent controls, and nationalisation of the energy companies, funded by taxing the rich.
But what they say and what they’d actually do are very different things.
They’ve said publicly that their strategy is to get enough votes for a hung parliament. Then they’d go into a coalition with Labour. So vote Green, get Labour.
Would a Starmer government, with the Greens as hangers-on, actually bring in free education or anything else on the Greens’ list?
Of course not. Starmer is fully committed to whatever the rich, the bankers, and the capitalists want him to do. And that lot want more privatisation and profit, not less.
The Green plan is to spend years trying to convince Starmer and the capitalists to be a bit nicer. They’ll be banging their heads against a brick wall. It’s a total waste of time.
Coalition
In Scotland the Greens were in a coalition government with the SNP until recently. It was the same story there. They thought they could convince the SNP not to make so many cuts, and maybe to invest a bit more. They failed, and got kicked out of the government by the SNP.
In other countries, like Austria, the Greens have gone into coalition governments with right-wing parties. They approached these with the same attitude, and got the same results – absolutely nothing for those of us wanting a real change. All they achieved was helping to support a right-wing government.
Even when the Greens have been in power on their own, they’ve ended up doing the opposite of what they’ve promised.
In the past, they controlled the local council in Brighton, where they carried out cuts and caused the bin workers to go on strike, because the Green council was treating them so badly.
As a result, the Brighton Greens were wiped out in last year’s local council elections. Everyone who voted for them in the past felt betrayed after their terrible performance in power.
Imperialism
To bring about their promises, the Greens think that they can just argue with rich people and politicians until they change their minds.
But they don’t realise that it’s not about changing a few capitalists’ minds. It’s about getting rid of the whole capitalist system. That’s the only way to sort out education, housing, and energy.
The Greens support capitalism, however. And they support its most vicious imperialist projects.
The Greens support NATO, for example: an aggressive weapon of western imperialism. It’s caused death and destruction all over the world, just to protect US investments, assets, and influence.
So the Greens support pumping billions of pounds into the war machine of western imperialism, just like the warmongers in the Tory and Labour parties do.
This is why they refuse to call Israel’s actions in Gaza a genocide. They’re worried about upsetting the western imperialists, whose approval is more important to them than the truth.
Revolution
The Greens won’t change anything. We need to fight the system. For that you need radical, genuinely socialist candidates. In various constituencies, there are a few people approaching that idea that are standing.
For us, Fiona Lali’s campaign in Stratford & Bow is the clearest example of a revolutionary approach to solving our problems.
Don’t vote Green. Vote Fiona.
We need healthcare, not warfare! Books, not bombs! Time to kick out the war criminals and fight for our future! pic.twitter.com/sQfkouSMcz
— Fiona Lali (@fiona_lali) May 29, 2024
